A few weeks ago I got a call from a local arcade machine guy. He had a gutted ThunderBlade cab for sale, $35. The wood was in good shape and included a coin door & a very beat up analog joystick. I picked it up primarily because it is very short and narrow (5.5 ft tall by 22 inches wide.) Relatively small, unlike my last monster project. I've always wanted to make a dedicated vertical cab and this is what I'm starting out with.

It is serial #2810 and had a lifetime play count of 16,011. I'm not sure how much this thing cost back in 1987 when it came out, but for a machine to only take in around $4,000 in 20 years, no wonder it was gutted out and sold for scrap. In cleaning it out I found 4 quarters, one dime, and one penny.

Project title: TimeSinkWhy? A timesink according to dictionary.com is: A project or activity that consumes unbounded amounts of time. That pretty much sums it up. It will be a timesink during construction, and possibly a timesink for years to come in play.

A few pictures to start things off…

1) Stock photo from klov.com2) My 6' 2" son looking down on the cab3) Front panel in rough shape

Plexiglas Lighting EffectOne thing I want to do on this project is add green light accents in various places. In a class I had in school, we studied fiber optics and played with side lighting Plexiglas with LEDs. Today I built a prototype. It’s pretty easy to do.

Steps involved:

1) Pick up a scrap piece of 3/8” (or thicker) Plexiglas from your local glass shop.

2) Route a straight 3/8” slot. In my case, there were a few imperfections from the router jumping, but it will be taken care of later.

3) Cut a piece of Plexiglas the length of the slot, and wide enough so that when it is flush with the front surface, approximately 1” sticks out the back. In theory, you want the front surface rough, and all other surfaces very smooth. Apparently the light reflects off the smooth surfaces, keeping more light inside until it hits the roughed up front surface, where it leaves the Plexiglas. I didn’t polish the sides on my prototype. The front surface is rough though.

4) Apply liberal amounts of Bondo to the slot and insert the Plexiglas.

5) Adjust the Plexiglas so that approximately 1/32” sticks out the front. Make sure the Bondo completely fills the arc at the ends of the slot and where the Plexiglas touches the wood.

6) Sand the front surface flat once the Bondo dries.

7) Drill two slip fit holes for two LED’s. You can experiment with the angle, but I seem to remember that something a little less than 90 degrees works best. You get “hot spots” if you point the LED’s straight out the front.

8 ) Rough up the front lens of the LED’s with sandpaper. This makes the light spread more, reducing hot spots.

9) Wire up your LEDs. In my case, I used 50 ohm resistors with a 5 vdc power supply. My cab will likely have 12 vdc available, so the resistors will need to be different. Long lead to positive. If you forget the resistor, you get a very bright light for about 10 milliseconds, then the magic smoke escapes. Make sure the lights work before moving to next step.

10) Epoxy the LEDs in the holes. It is important that you fill the holes completely with epoxy before inserting the LEDs. Air pockets will impede the light transfer into the Plexiglas. <edit - not true, not that important to fill completely>

11) Paint the surrounding surface and Plexiglas to shape the light. If you mess up you can always wipe it off. If you really mess up, you can sand it down again.

<edit>Edits based on further experimentation. Check out additional post below. Much more learnings. No polish required, don't side light, point led's straight at the face spaced fairly close (3/4") together.<end of edit>

Great idea - the only thing I would change is to perhaps use sockets for the LED's - I would want a way to replace them if they burn out. I can't wait to see how you incorporate this into your cab design...

Beautiful man!!! Very awesome light job there. I always wanted to do something with the 200 uv leds I bought awhile ago but never could think of anything other than lighting a big piece of plex and sandblasting away certain parts to make it look like an etched neon bar light or something like that. Very creative man.

About a month ago, javeryh started a thread about favorite vertical games. That inspired me to do some research. The resultant list is a spreadsheet of vertical games, sorted by popularity as voted on by members of mameworld.net. I trimmed out the porn and duplicates, getting the list down to about 200. Doing this work got me thinking about vertical cabs, then a cab dropped out of the sky, and here I go again. The list is attached below.

Great idea - the only thing I would change is to perhaps use sockets for the LEDs - I would want a way to replace them if they burn out.

Do you have problems with LEDs burning out? Its never happened to me (after I burn up a few getting the right resistor that is). I wonder if it would impact the light strength? I haven't done much experimentation with it.

How bright is it with two leds, cameras often lack the ability to really show lights well? How long a piece of plexi would they difuse across before getting dim?

The image is pretty true to life. The picture was taken in my kitchen with all lights on, no flash. It is not nearly as bright as a neon sign; not even as bright as a bulb. You can definitely tell it is a light source and not just bright paint. Notice the reflection on the table in picture #7. This is my first prototype so I'm hopeful that I/we can find the important parameters to make it better. With that said, I'm using two green (duh..) 700 mcd 5mm LEDs. The piece of Plexiglas is around 4" long. It is brighter at the ends near the LEDs. The brightness in the center is bright enough to see in daylight. Unless I change something, I will probably need one LED every 1-3 inches. I am hopeful, however, that there is some simple thing that can be done to light an entire 12" bar or so with only 2 LEDs. The issue is going to be getting a more consistant glow over the entire length. I've got some more playing around to do.

Monitor: I picked up a 19” ViewSonic flat panel LCD off eBay for $145 delivered. It showed up 2 days ago. Within 20 minutes, I was ripping into the case to remove the large heavy base. My wife thought I was nuts. I’ve got a spare 21” CRT laying around I could use. It would fit, but it would be tight, and the neck would stick out the back. I’m also trying to keep the weight down. I’m saving about 50 pounds by going this route.The LCD is pretty fast and bright (8 ms, 700:1 contrast) and should work out well.

Joystick & Buttons: My controls showed up yesterday. I’m using a Mag-Stik Plus (top switchable 4/8 way) with a green ball-top. Andy at Ultimarc.com has some cool new chrome ringed lightable buttons I’m going to try on this project. The front lense comes off, and you can put in your own back-lit artwork/text. I got 3 green, 3 white, and one red.

Spinner: Tornado USB. I bought this for the Partybox project, but didn’t have the room for it. I can’t wait to play again Tempest with a real spinner.

I also just bought 100 5mm and 100 3mm ultra-bright green LEDs off ebay. With shipping they were about $0.07 each. They claim the 5mm ones are 13,000 mcd (brightness). The ones I experimented with are 700. Do you think the Plexiglas will glow a bit brighter? Lots to play with…

Clipping the WingsThe original CP was very high. The profile had two "tabs" that ran flush with the CP. With the CP gone, they are going to be a difficult to deal with, so they have to go. I cut them off with a circular saw. I also bondo'ed over all the holes and hit it with a quick coat of paint. I'll do a much more through paint job later. I also mounted some wheels on to aid in moving it around.

Thanks. Back at you... Artifact is a great name for a cab as well. I had been knocking this name around for a long time, but it didn't make sense on my two previous projects. It feels right for this one.

CP BoxToday I built the extension to hold the control panel. Nothing exciting here. The bottom comes off with 3 screws to provide access to the CP. I used the biggest round-over bit I have to get nice rounded edges. I wanted to keep it inside the cab profile and as shallow as I could get away with. It is 20.5” wide by 5.5” deep. I’m thinking about putting the power switch, volume pot, and credit button on the angled surface below the CP (at arrow on 2nd picture). This will keep things in reach but slightly out of sight. I could put them on the vertical surface as well. Recommendations?

I also routed a long slit in the front for one of my lighting effects. I doubt I will be able to figure out how to light an entire strip, so I’ll probably put in 3 to 5 pieces with little gaps between. This step will have to wait for my 2 bags of LEDs to come in (Ebay, shipped from Hong Kong.) Then I can experiment a little more.

Any recommendations on how to get a router to keep from grabbing & kicking? I’m having a terrible time with it as you can see in the 4th picture.

Would frosted or semi opaque plexi diffuse the the light a bit more? (get rid of the hot spots)

would painting the back side of the plexi black keep all the light coming out the front, or dose it need those sides to reflect off of?

Thanks. According to my internet searching, a frosted surface will diffuse the light, both when it enters and exists the Plexiglas. I'm not sure about painting it black. I think the best way to keep the light inside is to polish the edge, the opposite of a frosted edge. I've got a lot of long strips to put in, and really need to get in some quality experimentation time. I have a few ideas, but am waiting for the bulk shipment of LEDs to show up.

Monitor Bezel and MountingI wanted to include a fancy bezel with the LCD monitor, but was stumped at how to mount it. The design I came up with involves two pieces of plywood, one with an opening ¼” wider than the monitor surface, and another with an opening 1” bigger than that. With a fancy profile bit on my router, I routed both pieces. When placed together, they form a cool window frame effect.

I’m using ¾” plywood left over from the Xcelerator project. Plywood is probably not the best choice for something like this, but it is already paid for. To address the small tares and voids, I mixed a bunch of Elmer’s wood putty with a bit of water to make a paste, the consistency of drywall mud. I then smeared it all over the routed surfaces. Once dried, I sanded it all down. All of the divots are gone and the surfaces are pretty smooth.

To mount the LCD, I first held the monitor in place, and positioned it while my son marked the back with a marker. I then put the assembly face down, and screwed in small blocks. This will hold it in place on the plane of the wood. I needed to come up with a way to hold the LCD against the wood, without crushing the plastic. To deal with that, I decided to use a strip of plumbers tape (metal strapping) and a 2” thick piece of foam rubber. It just needs to put enough pressure to keep it firm against the wood. When it is ready to be installed for good, I’ll probably lay down a small bead of silicon between the LCD plastic and wood. This should keep it from vibrating.

I’m planning on putting one or more vertical Plexiglas light effects along the sides of the bezel. Then the whole thing will be covered with a sheet of smoked tempered glass.

This cab is going to be bling city with all the lighting effects you are planning. On the router chatter I have the same problem. I read someplace that you want to do these types of cuts in multiple passes with each pass digging deeper into the wood. Also use a higher speed on your router if you have that ability. Mine is a variable speed and it had more chatter when the speed setting was low.

This cab is going to be bling city with all the lighting effects you are planning.

Not my intention, but thanks. I'm just thinking about one thin shaped line along each side of the monitor and one on the front of the CP. I'm really just looking for an accent, not bling per se. Sometimes less is more.

On the router chatter I have the same problem. I read someplace that you want to do these types of cuts in multiple passes with each pass digging deeper into the wood. Also use a higher speed on your router if you have that ability. Mine is a variable speed and it had more chatter when the speed setting was low.

Less material at higher RPM. I should have known that. I'll give it a try when I route the slots on the bezel. Thanks for the recommendation.

Wow Coder - you really do amazing work. I like the bezel - frame those arcade games like works of art!

Thanks. Now if I could just convince my boss. My wife isn't fooled. You wouldn't be that impressed if you saw the pile of test pieces and how much bondo/putty I've got covering up my mistakes. I'd go broke doing this for a living.

We're having a big BBQ in two weeks. I was hoping to get it done by then, but I probably shouldn't rush it. There is a lot of house/yard work to take care of as well. Perhaps showing it off mid-cycle will be impressive/educational. The Xcelerator and Partybox cabs are up and running should be keep the kids (and young people too) entertained.

Initial Experiment – LED SmoothnessI ran the first of what will likely be a number of experiments to characterize the effects that can be controlled with LED lit Plexiglas. The “knobs” we have to play with are many, but in this experiment, I wanted to see what the difference was between using a stock, polished LED and a sanded roughed up one. My thought was the sanded one would eliminate the hotspot problem.

In the first picture, you can see the raw difference in light diffusion. The light is more spread out with the sanded LED, but the hotspot at the LED appears to be larger. The light is more directed with the smooth, untouched LED.

The second picture is a side-by-side comparison of the two different LEDs in the same piece of Plexiglas. With the sanded LED, the hotspot is less intense, but it is larger. More importantly, notice the length that the light travels. If you put your right thumb over the bright spot, and your left one at a point where the light seems to fade off, you can see the smooth LED lights up the Plexiglas farther (about 3/4” farther under these conditions, or somewhere around 50%.) So sanding the LED does reduce the intensity of the hotspot, but it makes it bigger and kills so much of the lighting effect to make it a bad choice compared to the stock polished LED. Also look at the intensity of the reflection on the left edge. It is definitely brighter on the smooth LED version. Hum. Now if I could only get rid of the hot spot and reflect some of that light off the sides.

One thing I learned was that to do this kind of experiment, you need to control the environmental lighting, camera settings, distances, and angles.

use a silver spray paint on all surfaces of the plexi except where you want the light to show. Then point the LED into one of the painted surfaces. My assumption is that the spray paint will act like a mirror. Eventually the light will have to leave the unpainted side nicely diffused.

Lit Plexiglas ExperimentsMy objective was to find the magic combination of parameters that would provide the most consistent light through Plexiglas. After about 20 different experiments, over 40 photographs in controlled lighting environment, I think I've got it. Some of the crazy, and not so crazy ideas are discussed here. If you want to skip to the punch line, read the last couple of paragraph. Things I tried include:

LED Interface with the Plexiglas Tight hole vs. loose hole Blind hole vs. through hole Epoxy vs. no EpoxyNone of these showed any significant difference. The through hole was a bit better, but not much.

Polished vs. SmoothThis was very revealing. The light will bounce off (stay inside) if the angle of incidence was less than around 50 degrees. It caused lots of hotspots and was hard to control. It would be very bright in one spot, but would be almost completely dark ¼” away depending on the geometry. The convex shapes made this less apparent, but it was still too harsh. On the other hand, the roughed up surfaces caused the light to distribute more evenly but was not as bright. For both the polished and rough surfaces, putting a piece of tin foil on the surface made things slightly (maybe 10%) brighter.

I also tried roughing up the surface of the LED's. This made the light much more distributed, reducing the hotspot effect, but brought down the brightness.

Custom Shapes:Lots of crazy stuff was tried. Concave top surface, convex top surface, rounded corners, 45 degree corners, mushroom shape with light aimed toward the back, etc, etc. etc. In all, I made 16 different test pieces. Of all the parameters played with, the shapes had the greatest effect at changing the light characteristics.

Conditions:I rigged up a couple of pieces of black construction paper; one vertical, taped to a box, and another horizontal, taped to the table. I made small corner stops for the Plexiglas and camera. This made each shot very consistent regarding the distance and image size. It was handy for merging the images together for comparison. Each piece of Plexiglas was 3/8” thick by 2” by 4”. In all cases, the Plexiglas protective paper remained on the sides. I used the same LED for most all of the experiments.

I kept notes in a notebook. Each shot was numbered, and documented in a fairly crude manor. In general it included the picture id, polish/none, test piece #, and/or other attribute. On a red stick-um I wrote the picture id to know which picture was which.

Conclusion:I was not completely satisfied with any of the results. A couple of the custom shapes came close to getting an evenly distributed light. But they were finely tuned geometrically. I was concerned about how to scale it. For example, I wanted to be able to make a 2 inch light, or maybe a 2 foot light. The custom geometry approach was not going to scale well. I was thinking about putting LED’s every couple of inches, but that would lead to hotspots. I could put a bunch of sanded down LED’s about 4 inches away from the back, and it would be consistent, but would not be practical to mount.

On a whim, I tried putting the LED’s ¾” apart. Perfect, well almost. After all this time in the shop with compasses, sanders, Forstner bits, etc, the best result came from bruit force. A simple line of evenly spaced LED’s ¾” apart. Looking straight on you could barely make out the different light sources (much less than any other test). This went away by lightly sanding each of the LED’s. The light defused a bit more causing a lot of overlap between the LED’s light. Sure, I lost a little intensity by sanding them down, but with a whole lot more LED’s, it is VERY bright.

Best Results:For a 2” thick slab with a rough sanded face, rough sanded LED’s epoxied in ¾” apart. Holes drilled about ¼” deep using a #9 bit. If using a thinner slab, you might want to mount the LED’s a little closer together to avoid hotspots.

I took a lot of photos of the process, but will not bore you with the details. A few choice ones are presented below.

1) Polished vs. rough 45 degree backside piece. The brighter one was from the polished piece.2) The set-up3) Various custom shapes attempted4,5) The best resulting experiment. The right side is a little dim, but it is because I only had 7 LED’s wired up, but needed an 8th in the last hole.

With these experiments complete, I can prep some Plexiglas pieces and get them mounted in the CP and Bezel. Now back to your regularly scheduled cab build.

Today I did something I should have done years ago. I picked up a new router table. This thing is great. It allows you to do detailed router work, with 1/10th the hassle of setup and fixturing. Good stuff. I used it to route the slots on the bezel for the Plexiglas lighting effect. I followed Kaytrims advice and made each cut in two passes. One at half depth, the other all the way through. Much nicer.

My new LED’s got in yesterday. Wholly cow, these things are bright. Check out the comparison picture. I can run these things with 4 times the resistor value they are supposed to (per a LED/Calculator at http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz ) and they are still way brighter than the others. I picked up two sets of 100 at $7.00 each. One set is 8000 mcd (brightness) and 3mm diameter. The others are 13,000 mcd and 5mm diameter. I should have plenty of green LED’s to last me a while.

Because the new LED's are so much brighter than the others, they were causing more hotspots. I found two additional things that reduce hotspots. 1) Sand the front lens of the LED flat and rough up all the way around the sides. 2) Sand the long flat surface of the Plexiglas as well. The small scratches helps to diffuse the light when it bounces on the surface. The hotspots reduced significantly when I did this.

Other minor progress... I picked up the parts to make a PC switched front access single power button and ordered the front glass and marquee glass.

Next…well, lots of stuff, most notably getting the Plexiglas installed in the wood.

Thanks, but... come on man. If it's the lighting thing, you can handle it. Just give it try. It will cost you less than $10 and a few hours of playing around time.

1) Go to local glass shop and get $4.00 remnant piece of 3/8" Plexiglas2) Go to local Radioshack and pick up a $2.00 package of LED's and a $2.00 package of 350 ohm resistors. Or better yet, pick up a bag of them off eBay for a fraction of the per-piece price.3) Cut a 3/8" slot in wood with a router. If you don't own one, they are cheap at your local pawn shop.4) Cut Plexiglas a little shorter than routed slot, approximately 1.5 to 2" wide.5) Rough sand all Plexiglas surfaces.6) Mark off and drill holes 1/4" deep on 3/4" centers.7) Bondo Plexiglas into wood with just a little sticking out the front.8) Sand front surface smooth.9) Sand face of LED's flat and sand edges until frosted10) Solder resistors to LED's. It doesn't matter which side, just be consistent.11) Insert LED's into holes and touch each with a drop of glue.12) Wire short end of LED's to ground & long end to +12 of a dc transformer.13) Bask in the glow.

<edit - corrected resistor value for 12 vdc. If using 5vdc, resistor value would be somewhere around 50 ohms>

Are you a left handed spinner kind of guy? Tempest was setup for a right handed spinner control. I always played arkanoid with my right hand as well. I just don't have the control with my left hand to work a spinner.

This project is really coming along. I would love to get a router table but I haven't won the wife over with my wood working. I do it all in the garage (Sawdust City) and she is the only one who parks in there.

Those LED's are amazing. Are you going with one color or hooking up some kind of LED Wiz to it for effects?